President Trump immediately responded: “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”

Finally, the court gets down to the basic legal question. The court states that the Fifth Amendment is violated by the order, because the order does not provide “what due process requires, such as notice and a hearing prior to restricting an individual’s ability to travel.” What about the fact that the due process clause does not apply to non-citizens? The court simply dismisses that fact, stating that the due process clause applies to “all ‘persons’ within the United States, including aliens,” and including aliens traveling abroad. Then the court says that even if the president were to take lawful permanent residents off the table, the executive can’t be trusted to uphold that standard.
The court continues by stating that unlawful aliens have due process rights, too, and so even if the court were to ignore the lawful permanent residents and aliens abroad, they’d be forced to strike down the executive order. The court blithely notes, “There might be persons covered by the [temporary restraining order] who do not have viable due process claims, but the Government’s proposed revision leaves out at least some who do.” The court does not state who wouldn’t have due process rights if all the people they include are covered under the Fifth Amendment.

The court counterintuitively suggests that if it strikes down part of the executive order, it must strike down all of the executive order: “even if the TRO might be overbroad in some respects, it is not our role to try, in effect, to rewrite the Executive Order.” It’s odd how that works – when it’s Obamacare, the courts are happy to rewrite legislation to save them, but when it’s an executive order with relatively clear parameters, suddenly the courts get cold feet.